One of the things that utterly boggles my mind is how reluctant the publishing industry seems to be to acknowledge the existence of iOS devices. Offline, there’s relatively little coverage in Mac mags, and in the UK only the bi-monthly iPod & iPhone User is there for people who want to do more with their iPhones, iPads and iPods. It’s a pretty good mag (disclaimer: I also happen to write for it), but it’s crazy that it’s the only regular publication of its kind.

Perhaps publishers have as one decided there’s no market for competition, but given how iOS stories make a site’s visitor count jump, one might think there’d also be more interest in print-based publications. One argument against is that the relatively low cost of apps makes it unlikely people will buy an iOS magazine; but from a consumer perspective, I’d be happy to pay four or five quid each month if someone would tell me what great apps are out there and how to use them, rather than wading through pages of crap on the App Store and ‘wasting’ 59p a bunch of times before unearthing a real gem of a game or utility.

The iPad might be shaking up thinking in this area, due to apps and games for it generally being more costly than those for iPods. I sincerely hope so, because when I was asked to write the games section for the rather wonderful MacFormat Presents: iPad The Essential Handbook, I had a really fun week, and it was quite a come-down when I returned to my iMac, to review and write about all manner of Mac things. But even if I wasn’t a writer in this space, I’d love to have a small selection of monthly iOS mags to peruse, rather than a few pages in a Mac mag, combined with the inevitable moaning from Mac users about their mags being ‘polluted’.

Anyway, if you have an iPad or are considering getting one, MacFormat’s guide is well worth reading—there are plenty of tutorials and apps covered, for the princely sum of £7.99. You can buy it online from myfavouritemagazines.co.uk.

Kotaku’s mini-article Will Nintendo Release Its Games On, Say, Apple Hardware has some brief content from the Japanese giant that’s raised the hackles of gamers. On the prospect of Nintendo IP on iOS, Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata reportedly said: “Nintendo’s software and hardware are the same thing. Other companies don’t share Nintendo’s values or traditions when it comes to creating devices. We are absolutely not thinking of doing that.”

With every gamer wanting every game everywhere, Iwata’s statement has gone down like a sack of shit, but the reality is that Nintendo has, for many years, been the closest thing to Apple in the gaming space. It operates a largely closed model, and it’s therefore able to innovate—something it does far more often than its rivals, and often regarding UI/UX rather than by churning out Yet Another Console That Can Shift More Polygons. Because of this, Nintendo’s totally right to continue its ‘lock in’ way of thinking. It can do what it wants with its IP and not worry about anyone else.

However, the problem of being the Apple of the gaming space is when Apple itself arrives to spoil the party. On the desktop, Apple gaming has always been a joke, but in the mobile space, Apple is gaining serious ground. Time will tell whether Nintendo acts accordingly to the threat of Apple’s underlying ecosystem (if it doesn’t, it’ll potentially be playing the same game as Sega in a few years), but in retaining a general closed approach, the House of Mario is on the right path.

Apple often gets a lot of stick for the perceived ‘race to the bottom’ regarding App Store prices. Many developers feel compelled to reduce app prices to 99 cents or 59p, in order to compete—especially when it comes to games. However, it appears things on Android are even more grim, with Distimo’s latest app stores report stating over half of Android apps are free (TechCrunch).

Interestingly, while the Android Market is available in 46 countries, only 13 of them can download paid apps, and only nine enable devs to distribute them. While Google advocates and promotes the ‘free’ economy, it’s worth remembering that the company sits on a cash mountain of billions made from advertising. Developers do not—they need to eat, and they can’t eat ‘free’.

Therefore, here’s hoping Android swings more towards the balance seen in Apple’s App Store, and that both then manage to convince people that a few bucks for an app or game (as opposed to free or 99 cents/59p) isn’t actually a huge rip-off.

Nice to see that despite regularly capitulating to idiots, BBC Trust still has some balls. According to BBC News, BBC Trust has rejected plans to close 6 Music, with chairman Sir Michael Lyons saying the case for closure had not been made.

Given that even so-called rivals were saying 6’s closure would have been a huge error, and the fact that in the grand scheme of things, 6 Music costs bugger-all to run (unlike, say, the money-sink that is the mostly awful BBC Three), it’s great that common sense has mostly prevailed. I say ‘mostly’, because while 6 is safe, Asian Network hasn’t been so lucky and may still be axed, with BBC Trust saying it would “consider a formal proposal for [its] closure”.

Another slice of fried gold (smeared in shit, sadly) from the BBC in iPhone 4 signal fault leaves Apple ‘stunned’. What left me more stunned is how, once again, the BBC’s reporting is little better than copy-and-paste blogging, although they let someone else bang the same old drum about iPhone 4 ‘problems’ rather than bothering to do any actual reporting themselves.

In the report, Pocket Lint’s Stuart Miles says Apple raises questions about the iPhone 4: “Why, for the first time, has Apple released a bumper for their phone, and why does no one else have this problem?” My question: why doesn’t the editor of Pocket Lint (and a BBC reporter) not only know that every phone suffers from human-oriented antenna interference, and that some companies even note this in their instruction manuals? Maybe they should have asked the guys from AnandTech to comment instead—at least they know what they’re talking about regarding iPhone 4.